inclined his head.
Gray smoke billowed up in front of the screens. On the monitors, balaclava hoods were pulled into place, turning the hard-eyed killers into anonymous androids. The interior of the vehicle seemed filled with the muzzles of weapons.
Colonel Ayub let his breath out in a slow, controlled hiss and prayed Najafi couldn’t hear.
MICHAEL SULEIMAN looked out at the passing street through the bulletproof glass of his limousine’s rear windows. He watched, lost in thought, as the tall buildings of Beirut’s business district gave way to more residential neighborhoods as they drove up toward the hills east of the city.
In the car beside him, his wife, Suha, read from a children’s book to his four-year-old daughter, Taraneh. The little girl had her mother’s dark brown eyes and smooth olive complexion, as well as her keen intelligence. Michael Suleiman was always amazed by Suha’s insights, even after fifteen years of marriage. In his private moments he doubted seriously if he could have risen to power so smoothly in the Kataeb Party without her support.
His eyes slid past the scars of war left over from the violence of civil unrest dating as far back as the 1980s, despite the reconstruction efforts of more recent years. What his eyes couldn’t ignore were the piles of rubble left over from the sectarian violence following the 2006 incursion by the Israeli Defense Forces.
Unconsciously, Suleiman frowned at the thought. Despite international pledges to the contrary, that cross-border assault had only strengthened the hand of Iran in Lebanon, through their proxy puppets—Hezbollah.
In parliament, Suleiman had been using all the leverage he could muster to fight that Iranian influence in his homeland. It was this bitter opposition that had, in no small part, resulted in his newfound need for armed bodyguards.
Four soldiers armed with M-4 carbines drove a scout vehicle ahead of his limo, and even now one of the American-trained protection specialists rode with him, sitting next to his seven-year-old son, Ephraim, listening patiently as the young boy explained the intricacies of whatever new game he was playing on his handheld game system.
The bodyguard smiled indulgently over the boy’s head as his eyes met Suleiman’s. He looked like a favorite uncle indulging his nephew. Suleiman saw how earnest the boy, a spitting image of himself, was in the explanation and felt an answering grin tugging at his lips. Then the bodyguard’s jacket shifted, exposing the handle of the man’s machine pistol, and Suleiman’s smile faded. He looked away and out through the black-tinted glass of his window and sighed. One day, God willing, his country would be free of the influence of Iran. It was a mission to which he had dedicated himself tirelessly.
He’d be happier once they were safely home.
NAJAFI LEANED FORWARD, drawing deeply on his cigarette, his eyes narrowing as he watched the screen. The white Ford Excursion carrying Suleiman’s bodyguards drove past the mouth of his team’s ambush street, followed seconds later by the black stretch limo.
The team leader slapped the dashboard, and the SUV gunned forward as the vehicle operator responded to the command. The big automobile shot out of the side street and pulled in behind the cruising limo. The death squad began babbling excitedly, the words coming too hard and fast to differentiate over the microphone pickups. From behind the squad leader came the unmistakable staccato rhythm of a Kalashnikov on fully automatic.
Inside the confined space of the TOC, Ayub could feel his commander’s excitement. It rose from the man like heat or static electricity. The head of Iran’s elite Special Republican Guard loved the visceral thrill of his work.
On the screen Najafi watched as, ahead of the limousine, Suleiman’s scout vehicle swerved into the opposite lane in response to the first burst of gunfire. The interception had been designed to take place on the tight switchbacks leading into the residential hills above Beirut—making it easier to box in the target vehicles. The protective agents were falling neatly into Najafi’s trap.
The modified sunroof of the lead SUV slid back and a gunner armed with an American M-4 carbine popped out of the opening. The SUV slowed as the stretch limo sped up, making it easier for them to try to change places.
“Now!” Najafi snarled into his microphone pickup.
Suleiman’s bodyguard shouldered up his carbine and triggered a tight burst. On the HD monitor Najafi and Ayub watched the rounds spark off the reinforced glass of the hit squad’s vehicle. Ahead on the road a tight switchback suddenly appeared. The bodyguard SUV’s brake lights flashed red and the limo driver gunned it even harder.
“Yes,” Najafi whispered as if breathing into the ear of a lover.
On the screen, the multi-POV camera angles simultaneously revealed the sudden appearance of the garbage truck on the narrow road. The tail ends of both target vehicles suddenly fishtailed as their drivers slammed on their brakes. The garbage truck slowed considerably and swerved to the right, nose pointed toward the downhill side of the road.
The bodyguard SUV slammed into the back half of the garbage truck, its front end collapsing with a shriek of metal clearly audible over the repeated bursts of the gunfire pouring from the Hezbollah vehicle. The bodyguard firing from the sunroof was jerked forward like a rag doll, his weapon spinning away like a pinwheel as he was flung into the unforgiving steel of the massive garbage truck. His body seemed to explode with spraying blood as he was smashed to a pulp.
The front end of the limo slid forward at the end of a desperate skid and rammed into the garbage truck’s immense bumper. The limo’s hood crumpled, and the big V-12 engine block was shoved backward into the front passenger compartment, splitting the reinforced glass of the windshield. The spilled engine fluids caught fire and began to burn.
On the HD screen the garbage truck’s passenger door was kicked open. The assassin’s folding stock AKMS poured a hailstorm of heavy lead down on the crumpled limo, the muzzle-flash spitting star-pattern bursts of flame as the weapon bucked and kicked in the Hezbollah gunner’s hands.
The rounds slammed into the SUV’s already compromised windshield at point-blank range, punching divots and gouges and spiderwebbing the safety glass until it began to come apart completely. The black Suburban SUV holding the Hezbollah hit squad drove straight up into the pile, smashing bumpers with Suleiman’s limo and pinning it into place inside the killbox.
The Hezbollah hitters bailed out of their vehicles, spraying 7.62 mm rounds at the bodyguard vehicle. From that range, and under the terrific onslaught, glass was pulverized and metal riddled. On the TOC screens Ayub could clearly see the dark silhouettes of the trapped bodyguards dance and jerk.
On the screen, the team leader peeled off from the main group. A second and then a third Hezbollah foot soldier followed closely as they headed for the trapped and burning limo in a classic fire team configuration. The stretch limo’s driver door flew open and a Lebanese army commando in a dark suit and armed with an MP-5K emerged.
He was met with a merciless wall of lead as the team leader and flank gunners unleashed their Kalashnikovs. The HD monitors in the Lockheed’s TOC showed the carnage in startling clarity. Najafi ground out one cigarette as he watched the bodyguard come apart, dropping hard to his knees, his jaw going slack as the big bullets knifed through his body armor to scramble his organs. Then his head disappeared in a spray of pink and scarlet, and the brigadier general pulled another cigarette from his pack.
With the reactions of a trained sycophant, Ayub was there to light it. There were dark stains on his silk shirt under his armpits and his forehead was beaded with sweat. Najafi’s eyes danced from
